Today some researchers of the CNSC group are in the December session of the Metadecidim LAB to discuss the design model to improve Participant Experience (PX) in the Decidim platform.

One of the challenges of network democracy is to make the new and complex instruments and infrastructures attractive and easy to be used by the citizens. Enhancing user satisfaction with a web by improving its usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction with it, is one of the main challenges of the User Experience (UX) area of research and practice.

In the case of Decidim, the challenge is especially considerable for two reasons:

The complexity and novelty of the processes involved. Decidim not only has to be intuitive and easy to navigate as a web page but it has to serve as a gate for new democratic processes.

The collaborative and democratic design. Decidim is a platform co-designed by citizens, it is not only a digital platform for network democracy but also a democratic platform in its design and governance. This is why the PX group of the Decidim’s community (Metadecidim) proposes a transition from the traditional UX model (in which users interact with an interface whose final design depends on its owners, often corporations) to an innovative model, which we define as PX (Participant Experience), in which the people involved are presented as participants in a process of continuous democratic co-design of the platform.

The key challenge of Participant Experience in Decidim can be subdivided into a series of questions:

What models or paradigms of design around the UX exist?

What are the factors to be considered (the information architecture, the user interface, navigation,…)? And what are the basic rules and recommendations?

Which model is the most appropriate and how should it be modified to respond to the idiosyncrasy of a project as Decidim?

What practical implications (challenges, possibilities, etc.) does the transition from the traditional UX model to the PX concept have?

What role does the participant’s experience play in the constitution of and participation in new forms of networked democracy, as well as in its success or failure?

What is the connection between experience and participation?

What are the theoretical coordinates and central practices from which we must think them? And the methodologies

Metadecidim LAB is an open and collaborative research space aiming to address key issues for the development of Decidim (such as privacy, security, ontology, etc.), and to create a community of experts interested in building a networked democracy. The researcher from CNSC have partecipated in the Decidim project coordinating the Metadecidm Lab since the beguining of the project.